Analysing videos

'Down Down Down by Charlie Simpson'

• It is narrative/performance based.
• There is a storyline about two characters in a house, but you also see the singer, Charlie, walking through the woods and singing and playing guitar, between clips of the characters.
• The editing and cutting of the video is quite slow, as is the song. However towards the end of the song, the pace picks up, and suddenly so does the pace in the video, as the male character suddenly panics at what has happened, and stars packing stuff in a bag, while the girl is running through the woods.

Analysing Videos

'Free by Twin Atlantic'

• The video is performance based, beginning with one of the band members playing the piano, and then showing the other band members, singing, and playing other instruments.
• the video is quite a fast pace, fitting with the music beat. The Video and lyrics don't have a major link, however, at the beggining you see a crowd of people stuck behind a gate trying to get into where the band are  playing, and later on in the video they are released through this gate, and are running freely, around the area, so this is the link between the lyrics, being free.
• However, the lyrics "I set my body on fire so I could be free" obviously are not shown in the video.
• The performance based video shows close ups of the lead singer, the guitarist and his guitar, the drummer, and the crowd around them.
• The camera work is shakey, dramatically shakey, as if you are there yourself, watching the band jumping around, performing, really putting everything into this one performance.

Mini Mock Up of Poster

This is a mini mock up/plan of the layout. The background image is of a piece of buring paper with 'Free' written on it. The bands name is either the top, or in the middle. And there will be various quotes and ratings going on within the poster. At the bottom of the poster, there will be information about the CD, who produced it, wrote the songs, etc... The release date will be written in the top right hand corner. At the moment, it seems very precise as to where everything is placed, however when i comes to actually making the poster, it probably will slightly differ in the way it looks.

Planning for first Ancillary Task

After looking into othe bands from the same genre and origin, this has helped us. We have decided we don't want to use a picture of the band, this is also because on Twin Atlantic's poster, they use random objects.

As part of our idea for our music video, we want a piece of paper saying 'I set my body on fire so I can be free' we are going to include this in our poster. Instead of the paper saying that, we are going to change it to the song title, with the bands name.

The font they have used on poster seems quite square, like a font used on an old computer. As they have used this font, we will probably use on similar. The font we have looked into using in shown on http://www.dafont.com/aldo-the-apache.font?text=Twin+Atlantic
Although this font is quite similar to the one used on their own poster, its a lot more rounder, and looks more modern.

We have also discussed adding quotes and reviews from different music magazines, bands and the audience. We will probably also include star ratings out of five. You could usually find these on posters too.

Research for first Ancillary Task

As part of our ancillary task, we are going to do a poster. As Twin Atlantic is an Alternative Rock band from Scotland, we have researched into posters released in the same genre and place. Here are some pictures:

Biffy Clyro

Yashin

We Were Promised Jet Packs

As you can tell, only one band have used their picture on the poster. Were as the other two bands use objects or other people. By researching into other bands from the same genre and the same origin (Scotland) it has helped us come clear with what we want on our poster.

Rough Idea for Music Video

We have chosen 'Free by Twin Atlantic' for our music video. As we wanted to do a narrative based video, we feel that this was the bst choice without copying what has previously been done.
When we chose this song, many ideas came into our minds about how and what we was going to film. Here is our rough idea:

• Slow motion, not fast paced.
• People running and hiding.
• Make sure the setting is fairly dark, and use shadows.
• Close Proximity (as the song is about being free, making someone fight the closeness).
• Someone running, then stopping and mouthin 'I can be free'.
• A piece of paper saying 'I set my body on fire so I can be free' then setting the paper on fire, as a gesture of becoming free.

This is only a rough idea.

Research into Twin Atlantic "Free"- album cover.

We did some research into the new album cover, to see whether the band used a photo of themselves, or used an alternative cover design.
Here is what we found;

This is a photo of the front and back of the album, aswell as the CD itself.

This is the album cover we found, which we really like, we think its quite interesting with all the different objects, it makes us wonder why those objects were chosen, is there any relevance to any of the songs? Or to Freedom? Or do they mean anything to the band?

Analysing Videos

'The A Team by Ed Sheeran'.

• It is narrative based.
• The meaning behind the video is about a girl addicted to coccaine. The meaning behind the lyrics are shown to be about coccaine too, so there is a link. 'She's in the class a team' this lyric shows that she is taking class a drugs (coccaine). 
• The editing and cutting of the video is very slow, which reinforces the slow pace of the video. This could also reflect how she is feeling?
• Each scene changes on the new beat.
• The lyrics greatly link with the music video, as they describe the activites she is doing throughout the day. 'Go mad for a couple grams' which refers to her drug addiction of class a drugs. This lyric is backed up by the girl buying and then taking drugs. 
• This video looks as if it has been set in a busy city of some sort. The places that are seen in the video, are every day, common places, which makes the video seem more realistic.
• As the video is filmed in black and white, this makes it seem quite simple, only costing £20, but this could also reflect the simplicity of the characters life.

Possible Song Choices

We have narrowed our choice down to three songs. We have chosen to do a narrative based video as we believe it will appeal to the audience more. 

Our first song we hve chosen is 'The A Team - Ed Sheeran'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAWcs5H-qgQ 

Our second song is 'Free - Twin Atlantic'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkY-sEkWc-I

Our third song is 'Down Down Down - Charlie Simpson'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_g3pT8nac8

We originally had about 10 songs from different genres. We couldn't decide which ones we liked the most, so we eliminated the genres we thought wouldn't work as well as others. These were songs by Chase and Status, You Me At Six, Artic Monkeys, Jessie J and more. The genre we decided to sway towards was indie/alternative. Because we wanted our video to be narrative based, we thought this genre was more accessible in us doing so. We then narrowed it down to the three songs above. We think these will be very good to film and edit, and we think the audience will enjoy them as much as we will!